Some users of network resources consistently use a large amount of network bandwidth. Experience has shown that a few such users can congest a network and facilitate a potential network outage. Some applications may also use a large amount of network bandwidth, also causing network congestion. Exemplary high-bandwidth applications may include high-definition (HD) video, frequent large file transfer (FTP), and graphical cloud computing applications.
Traffic policing is a process of monitoring network traffic for compliance with a traffic contract, and taking steps to enforce that contract. One type of a traffic contract may be referred to as a service level agreement (SLA). Traffic policing functionality may be implemented in various ways in communications networks, and in particular token bucket algorithms are widely used. A token bucket algorithm measures the data usage of a user or application, and compares whether the measured data usage is within a level of network resource usage agreed to in the traffic contract or SLA.